Were that to happen, it would be grossly unfair on Palm, whose Pre goes toe-to-toe with Apple’s iPhone on many counts, and in some areas, arguably betters it.

Stubbier than the iPhone, the Pre has a 3.1in touch-screen with many of the same capacitive interface features as Apple’s multi-touch device. It also has a small, slide-out Qwerty keyboard, which is compact but effective, yet perhaps not quite as easy to type on as a BlackBerry.

If the Pre’s design and interface feel familiar, it’s not surprising – Palm’s executive chairman, Jon Rubenstein, is a former Apple employee and was part of its hardware engineering and iPod division.

So, you have a “home” button, just like on the iPhone, which takes you to a starter screen from which you can navigate around applications by clicking on icons in the “dock” along the bottom of the screen or calling up the main menu.

Open apps and programs appear on the home screen like a deck of cards, with users flicking between them to select. The Pre is capable of running multiple apps at the same time, meaning you could be carrying out an instant-messaging chat at the same time as getting turn-by-turn directions. The iPhone is not yet capable of this, though something similar is due with the software 3.0 update, more details of which we’ll hear at the WWDC conference on Monday. Closing an app is as simple as swiping a finger the length of the phone’s screen, from bottom to top. The whole interface feels slick and responsive, though there is some time lag between selecting an application and being able to use it.

The Pre ticks all the boxes needed for a modern smartphone – WiFi and 3G connectivity, web browser, YouTube access, 8GB of memory, app store for downloading games and programs, Amazon MP3 access for song downloads, three-megapixel camera with flash (although, curiously, no video-recording function; this inspired-by-Apple thing is going too far), accelerometer for switching between portrait and landscape, etc etc.

But it’s greatest strength is its operating system, WebOS, built from the ground up by Palm, and designed to tap in to the benefits of cloud computing.

This means that rather than the Pre’s address book simply containing phone numbers, it also pulls in Facebook and Twitter profile details, instant-messaging handles, and email contacts from numerous accounts, thanks to its “Palm Synergy” technology.

It also means that you can keep a single “thread” of correspondence with contacts, even if some of that correspondence took place via email, text and IM.

Web browsing is quick and intuitive – enter a search, and the Pre will try to guess whether your question is best answered by searching the web, pulling up a map, or even throwing the request out to Twitter and Wikipedia.

As you would perhaps expect, all this whiz-bang technology drains the Pre’s battery rather quickly, but hey, who cares when you can buy the wireless Touchstone charger to keep it topped up with juice?

?For now, the Pre is exclusive to the Sprint network in the United States; intrigue continues to surround its UK launch date, and its exclusive carrier partner in Britain, though the smart money appears to be on O2, the company that already boasts the iPhone on its handset roster.

Overall, then, the Pre is an accomplished smartphone, with an intuitive interface, an excellent operating system, and plenty of bells and whistles to recommend it as a possible iPhone alternative to consumers.

Whether that is still the case once Phil Schiller takes to the stage on Monday to deliver Apple’s keynote, though, remains to be seen.